REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT
AT DEDICATION OF ANDERSON COTTAGE
U.S. SOLDIERS' AND AIRMEN'S HOME
AS A NATIONAL MONUMENT

U.S. Soldiers' and Airmen's Home
Washington. D.C.

12:00 P.M. EDT

THE PRESIDENT: Well, thank you very much. Hello, everyone,
and welcome to what most people call the Old Soldiers' Home, the
Soldiers' and Airmen's Home, on this historic day.

I want to begin by thanking General Hilbert for his leadership
here. And I want to thank Bill Woods for speaking on behalf of all the
residents at the home. He said to me, you know, I stumble a little, I'm
not used to doing this. I thought he did a fine job. (Applause.)

He told you one of the things that I wanted to say, which is
that the people who live in this home open amazing volumes of mail -- at
one point, 9 million pieces since he's been at it. A lot of that mail
is mail that very young children send to Socks and to Buddy. And you
may know that Hillary actually did a book on the best letters that
children wrote to the White House asking questions of our pets. And it
would have been impossible to do that book, and it would be impossible
to respond to those children with the staff we have at the White House
if it weren't for the veteran volunteers here, who do this and so many
other things to help the White House work.

I hope one of the things that will come out of this today is
that the people who have retired after distinguished careers in military
service will finally get some of the credit they deserve for helping the
White House to operate every single day of the year. And we thank them
all. (Applause.)

I also think we brought Buddy and Socks out here today to
play. I hope I get them back before the end of the day.

I would like to say a special word of appreciation to
Secretary West for his work with our veterans. And because of what
we're doing today, I want to say again how indebted I feel the country
is to Secretary Babbitt and to those who work with him, especially Bob
Stanton, the Director of the National Park Service. We make another
milestone decision today under the leadership and with the drive of
Bruce Babbitt. When all is said and done, I'm not sure America will
ever have had an Interior Secretary who had done so much good for the
natural heritage of America as Bruce Babbitt. (Applause.)

I want to thank George Frampton, of the White House, who has
done so much to support this effort. I thank the members of the D.C.
City Council who are here today. We're going to try to raise a little
more money to help you with the continued renaissance of our Nation's
Capital, and we thank you for your leadership. (Applause.)

I want to thank Richard Moe, the President of the National
Trust for Historic Preservation, for all that his organization has done
to protect this site and others like it. The Trust is helping to put
places like Anderson Cottage literally back on the map.

And, finally, this is one of the First Lady's White House
millennial projects, which has allowed us to honor our past and imagine
the future. I want to thank Ellen Lovell, who runs that project, and I
want to thank Hillary for the truly astonishing impact this millennial
effort has had in our country. Dick Moe told me on the way up here that
we've now seen $100 million divided almost 50-50 between public and
private monies committed to preserve the great treasures of America, of
which this is one. And I know how passionately Hillary feels about
this.

I'll never forget, I was once reading -- a couple years ago I
was reading this biography of Rutherford Hayes. And President Hayes, he
was one of those Union generals from Ohio that got elected President --
Grant, Hayes, Harrison, McKinley. After the Civil War, if you were a
Union general from Ohio, you had about a 50-percent chance of being
elected President. (Laughter.) There has never been any category of
Americans that had such a high probability of being elected President as
Union generals from Ohio between 1865 -- or 1868 and 1900.

But anyway, I was reading how Hayes brought his family up here
because the Potomac was a swamp and the mosquitos were terrible and the
heat was unbearable, and no one could work in the White House. And I
started talking to Hillary about this, and she kind of nosed around up
here. And we knew about the home because of all the work that the
veterans here do for the White House. And one thing led to another, and
this became one of our millennial treasures.

But I am very grateful to her and to Ellen Lovell, because I
think that the millennial projects around the country -- and I'll say a
little more about this later -- have really given a lasting gift to
America. So I want to thank them. I know Hillary wishes she could be
here today. (Applause.)

Now, I understand I am the first President since Chester
Arthur to actually go up and down the stairs at the Anderson Cottage
more than 100 years ago. But the place is very special to America. It
has so much of the spirit of Abraham Lincoln, even though it has almost
been forgotten for more than a century. It's not because the people
have forgotten President Lincoln; last year more than 1 million people
visited Ford's Theater alone. But barely 100 made it here to Anderson
Cottage, where Lincoln lived and worked; where his son played and his
wife found solace; where his ideas took shape and his last, best hopes
for America took flight.

In some ways, this cottage behind me is the most important, as
well as the least known, Lincoln site in the entire United States. He
spent a quarter of his presidency at this cottage, he called the
Soldiers' Home. It was, in part, summer days like this one, that drew
the Lincolns here, to higher ground, where the breeze flows more and a
visitor can breathe a little easier. In 1862, Mr. Lincoln's second year
as President, he and Mary packed up and moved the family these few miles
north for the summer. It was quieter here; it was a place to reflect;
and for them, at that time, it was, sadly, also a place to grieve for
the lost of their young son, Willie.

It was a place where the President could sit beneath the
canopy of a beautiful copper beech tree, to go again through the books
of poetry he loved so, or drop the books and follow his son, Tad, up
into the cradle of the tree's great limb. That tree is just behind the
cottage here. I saw it when I arrived and I walked beneath its canopy
just as President Lincoln did almost 140 years ago. It is still very
much alive, standing proudly and, I might add now, because it is three
centuries old, it is our last living link to Abraham Lincoln.

It's hard to believe we're just a few miles from the White
House. On a clear day, it's close enough to signal by semaphore from
the Sherman Building tower; close enough to commute. On my short drive
here today, I thought about how Mr. Lincoln used to come here -- on
horseback or by carriage , up and down the old 7th Street Pike. His
days were spent in wartime Washington; his nights and mornings here.
Not a bad commute by our standards, but it wasn't especially safe,
either.

One evening, in August of 1864, the sound of a gunshot sent
Mr. Lincoln, who was riding alone on horseback, scrambling for home.
He made it back here safely, though his $8 plug hat did not -- the
bullet passed through the hat, but thankfully, not through him. His
guards found it along the road -- and they found the bullet hole.

The Soldiers' Home gave the Lincolns refuge in times of
trouble, but not escape. If anything, being here often brought
President Lincoln closer to the front. The Battle of Fort Stevens was
waged just two miles north of here. Lincoln got on his horse and went
to witness the fight. On another ride, he passed an ambulance train, a
terrible reminder of the war's human cost. And in July of 1864, the
able Confederate General Jubal Early got so close to this cottage that
Lincoln had to return in haste to the relative safety of the White
House.

The war was never far away from him. In that, I think we see
the real significance of the Soldiers' Home. For Lincoln came to this
cottage not to hide from war, but to confront its deepest meanings, to
plumb its most difficult truths, to find the solace necessary to muster
the strength and resolve to go on. It was here, as many of you know,
that President Lincoln completed a draft of the Emancipation
Proclamation, which abolished slavery in the seceding states. When he
signed it, Lincoln said, "my whole soul is in it." You can still feel
that spirit strongly in the room in this cottage where he worked.

America knows Monticello, Mount Vernon, Hyde Park. We come to
understand our heroes not only through their words and deeds, but by
their homes, the quiet places they created for themselves and their
families. But not enough Americans know about Anderson Cottage and the
truly historic role it has played in our nation's history. We should,
and now we shall. There is fragile, vital history in this house. Today
we come to reclaim it, to preserve it, and to make it live again -- not
simply to honor those who came before, and not only for ourselves, but
for generations yet to come who need to know how those who lived here
lived and made the decisions they made, at a profoundly fateful time for
our nation.

Our compact with the past must always be part of our
commitment to the future. So today I am proud to designate President
Lincoln's summer home, the Soldiers' Home, as a national monument.
(Applause.)

I am using the power vested in me under the Antiquities Act,
because conservation applies not only to places of great natural
splendor, but to places of great national import. This cottage in its
way is just as precious as a giant Sequoia, as irreplaceable as the
ruins of cultures long past. And it is our profound obligation to
preserve and protect if for future generations.

I am also announcing as part of our partnership with the
private sector to save America's treasures, an award of $1.1 million to
Anderson College. (Applause.) Now, we need a lot more, but this is a
good start -- one of 47 grants we're awarding today, $15 million
overall, to fund preservation efforts across America.

As I said, Hillary inspired this whole millennial "Save
America's Treasures" project. We both look forward to the important
work ahead, to continuing it for the next six months, and in the years
ahead when we return to private life. This new round of awards will
reach from Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, to Central High School in Little
Rock, Arkansas; from Ellis Island in New Jersey, to the USS Missouri
anchored off Hawaii.

The Missouri, as some of you may recall, is where the Japanese
formally surrendered, bringing an end to the second world war. We have
a gentleman here today who served on that battleship and witnessed that
ceremony. Tony Antos, if you're here, I wish you'd stand up so we could
give you a hand. Where are you? Thank you, sir. (Applause.)

The Save America's Treasures" movement has already saved the
Star-Spangled Banner, the Declaration of Independence and the
Constitution and, now, Anderson Cottage. The new steps I announced
today, along with the new funds, will help to ensure that the Soldiers'
Home is restored to the way it looked when the Lincolns lived here.
Then, at long last, school children and scholars alike can tap this
precious national resource. And we will all better understand the life,
times and legacy of Abraham Lincoln.

Earlier, I said Mr. Lincoln sat beneath the copper beech tree
and read books of poetry, the works of Burns, Holmes, Whittier. His
favorite poem was called, "Mortality," by William Knox. He knew every
line, every word, by heart. He said it so often, people started to
believe he had written it. In a few moments, when I sign the
proclamation establishing this as a national monument, you might think
of this stanza as a brief meditation, which meant so much to President
Lincoln, and you might think of it any time we act to preserve our
history and our heritage for our future:

"For we are the same our fathers have been;
We see the same sights our fathers have seen;
We drink the same stream, we view the same sun,
And run the same course our fathers have run."
Thank you very much. (Applause.)
END 12:15 P.M. EDT